Teaming Up ToRaise Awesome Kids

Just as catastrophic flooding hits both sides of our planet, Catholics around the world will join together on Sept 1st to pray for the care of creation. We will also be reflecting on & implementing ways to do a better job of protecting creation in our daily lives.You don't have to be Catholic, or even religious, to participate with us. If you are not Catholic, but you want to join in and do your part, here are a few ideas:

Pray or meditateWhatever your faith or belief, you can pray or meditate however you see fit. Some ideas for topics include considering how your own actions contribute to climate change. thinking of the plight of the poor (who are disproportionately effected by climate change and natural disasters), asking for our leaders' hearts to be stirred to action, recognizing the interconnectedness of all humans and our planet, and empathizing with those being currently effected by extreme weather exacerbated by climate change.

Ask the religious people in your life if they will prayFor those of us living in the US, it can be heartbreaking to watch friends and family embrace hate and fear over their faith. You can gently remind the religious in your life to pray. Ask if their faith has a special prayer that is used. If you know Catholics, show them or ask them about the "Prayer to Care for Our Common Home".

Ask the religious people in your life what their religion teaches about caring for the environmentBy asking the religious in your life to teach you about their faith, you can help them learn more themselves. Ask specifically what does the faith teach about the environment instead of asking what their opinion on the environment is. Ask what their scripture says about caring for the environment. Ask for credible or official sources that you can read for yourself.

Ask your leaders for environmental actionTake the time on Sept 1st to call or write to your elected officials and ask them to take action to protect the environment. Pick a specific goal to ask for. In the US, asking for support of the EPA or for the Paris Climate Accord are good options. If your elected official is religious, ask them to pray for the environment.

Give up meat for the dayOn Sept 1st, try to only eat plant-based foods. The meat and dairy industry use a lot of water and produce a large amount of green house gases. Reducing meat consumption can greatly affect carbon emissions. After Sept 1st, try to reduce your overall meat consumption. Institute one or more vegetarian dinners a week. Even if you're not able to give up meat, simply reducing the amount you eat to recommended portion sizes makes a significant difference.

Cut down electricity, gasoline and water useCutting back electricity can really make a huge difference in your carbon footprint. If you live in an area that relies primarily on coal for electricity, strive to cut back as much as possible. Residents in areas that use a lot of coal have the opportunity to drastically reduce our carbon footprint. Start with a small change tomorrow that you can keep up, then once it's habit, add another.Unless you live in a drought-prone area, saving water is an area a lot of folks overlook. Even if your area isn't in a drought, saving water helps the environment. It keeps more water in nature and cuts back on water and waste water needing treatment. A lot of water waste is done out of habit, and changing those habits can take time. An easy one to start with is reducing your shower time.

Cut back on food wasteFood waste is a huge contributor of green house gases. By growing, transporting, packaging, storing and selling food that eventually gets tossed into a landfill, we have created a huge problem. Cutting back on your family's food waste can have a big impact. Try planning your meals, finding ways to reuse leftovers and looking up the proper way to store different foods. Before making dinner, check your fresh produce to see if something needs to be used first before it goes bad. If you need to use an ingredient before it goes bad and don't have any ideas, check out Supercook, a site that lets you put in what you have and emphasize an ingredient and then gives you recipes you can make.If food waste is an area your family struggles with, take the opportunity on Sept 1st to start a month long log of all the food your family wastes. At the end of the month, calculate how much money your family lost. Sometimes having the numbers can be the motivation for real change.

DonateIf you are able, donate to charities that help fight climate change. In the US, the Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Fund are a few of my favorites.If you're not able to contribute financially, you can donate items your family no longer uses to charities such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army. A ton of our emissions come from manufacturing all of the stuff we consume. Take Sept 1st as a day for your family to clean out the garage and donate. This will keep someone else from having to buy new.

When making changes to your life for the better, remember to start small and work your way up. A small sustained change makes a bigger difference than a big gesture. As your family makes changes together, discuss why you're making changes and encourage each other.

Watching Hurricane Harvey made me think of what families could do in emergency situations if they run out of diapers. Living in tornado alley, I know that the possibility of natural disaster is something that looms no matter where you live. You might have hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or earthquakes. Any of these events could make you lose power or leave you or your town stranded without the ability to go get more supplies. Luckily, you have a lot of options on things you can use as diapers in an emergency.

This project started with a few assumptions. One, I'm assuming that you don't already use or have cloth diapers. Two, you aren't crafty at all and don't have any craft supplies. Three, you don't have any ability to look up a bunch of different ways to fold flat pieces of fabric into a diaper.

For using cloth as diapers, you need 2 parts: absorbent fabric and waterproof fabric. For the absorbent part of these diapers, I'm using different household materials. Any absorbent fabric will work. Look for cotton, bamboo and hemp. 100% is going to give you the most absorbency. Microfiber cleaning towels can also work, but they can't go directly against your baby's skin. For waterproof fabric, I'm using polyester fleece. Fleece isn't actually waterproof, it's only water resistant. However, if it's an emergency, you can get by with it.Depending on the fabrics used, most of these diapers will only last about 2 hours. The thicker fabrics will last longer, use these for night time and naps.For attaching the diaper to the baby, I'm assuming that there's no snappi, boingo or diaper pins available. Something we can all find around the house is elastic. Inspired by diaper belts, you can tie on a strip of elastic to use to secure the diaper. Elastic can be cut off a pair of underwear or pants and tied over the absorbent fabric to keep it on. You might also have an ace bandage with Velcro in your first aid kit that could work. Depending on the length of the emergency, you might be able to get through without washing any of your emergency diapers. You can keep your dirty diapers in a bucket, plastic bin, trash can or laundry hamper. If you will need to wash your diapers, you can hand wash with a bucket and plunger or in your bathtub.

Absorbent Woven Fabrics:Receiving Blankets, Swaddles, Pillowcases

Knit Absorbent Fabrics:T-Shirts and Towels

Water Resistant Fabrics:Polyester Fleece Blankets and Pants

Since my son just woke up from his nap, I thought I would try out using the no-sew fleece cover and a hand towel as a diaper. I am using a snappi to secure the towel. If you buy one cloth diaper supply for your emergency kit, get a snappi, a set of boingos or diaper pins. I would not use regular safety pins because they do not lock, meaning they can open and poke.I used the newspaper fold on the hand towel. There are tons of different folds to use with different sizes of fabric. You can use folds for flat cloth diapers or folds for prefold cloth diapers. There's not really a right or wrong way to fold up your fabric. Use whatever works best for you!Once he's wet through, I will update on how long this set up lasted. He seems very comfortable: crawling and cruising like normal!

Hand towel secured with snappi

Cover over hand towel

Update:I have tried some of these emergency options a few times now. The hand towel lasts about 2.5hrs, receiving blanket and t-shirt about 1.5hrs. The tie-on cover works significantly better than the fleece pants. If I was going to try for overnight, I would use the tie on cover with the pants.

For me, there was never any question about wanting to use cloth diapers. When I was in high school, a friend had a new younger sibling who was cloth diapered. Her mother raved about all the advantages. This recommendation put the idea in my head and helped lead me to decide to use cloth years before I had my oldest son.I'm really happy that I knew about cloth diapers instead of thinking that I had no real choice. I have compiled a list of reasons that informed my initial decision to cloth diaper. These reasons also helped get Dadda on board and have kept us using cloth diapers.

To Help the EnvironmentThere's a lot of debate as to which is worse or better for the environment: cloth or disposable? To me, it seems that with how a lot of families use cloth diapers, they have the potential to be worse. If you buy a large stash of all new cloth diapers (I've seen some sites recommend 60+ All-In-Ones!), have a water-intensive wash routine, dry in the dryer, and don't reuse for another child or resell your diapers when finished, then they're honestly probably worse than disposables.We don't do any of that! Other than 2 new diapers, all of our diapers and covers are secondhand. I will have another detailed post later on what exactly we use and why. Buying used means that more cloth was not manufactured for our diapers. We also plan on reusing our diapers for at least a second child. If we run into issues with stretched out elastic or not sticky Velcro or broken snaps, I'll fix the diapers myself instead of replacing them entirely.A lot of different sites and YouTube videos will also recommend some pretty water wasting wash routines. For our family, we rinse poopy diapers in the toilet using a diaper sprayer. Then we will wash on warm, with white linens and towels. We leave the machine open for about 10 mins to delay the wash while the machine is full of water. This allows me to soak and make sure the diapers are penetrated without using extra water or electricity. That's it. We don't do a bunch of different rinse cycles. We wash every 2 days with a pretty full load. Washing often prevents the crystallization of urine which makes the diapers need those extra rinse cycles. Also, rinsing the poopy diapers in the toilet saves water: with about 2-4 poopy diapers per load of laundry, I estimate that at most we use an extra 16 gallons of water vs the 45 gallons or so we would use with a pre-rinse cycle on the washing machine. That metric might change once the new baby is born because newborns go so much more!The final thing we do in our diaper routine is we hang dry all of the pieces of the diapers as often as possible. Our diapers come in pieces, so those pieces can be line dried in usually a few hours. The exception is in super humid weather. If the diapers are still wet after line drying all day, we will dry them in the dryer for a partial cycle. We use wool dryer balls to cut down on the drying time also. Line drying outside has the added benefit of making the diapers smell nice and the sun bleaches out stains and germs.

Save MoneyCloth diapering this way saves us a significant amount of money. Our diaper stash cost (is costing, we're still getting newborn sizes for baby #2) is about $300, not including what we will recoup at resale. This is a lot higher than it would have been if we weren't going to be diapering 2 babies at once. If we assume that each washing costs about $1.50, and we do 2 extra loads a week, then our total cost for washing diapers for 3 years (2 years per child with a year of overlap) is about $470. If we have a third child, that will increase by a little over $300. So for 2-3 kids, our total diapering cost will be about $800-1100. At most, that would have gotten us through 10 months of diapering with disposables. To use disposables entirely on potentially 3 children would cost us about $9000.For our newborn diapers alone, we are spending between $80-100 (depending on the deals we can find). To compare that to disposables for the same period, we would spend $300-600. The newborn diapers will be reused if we have a third baby and resold when we are finished with them.It is possible to not save as much money cloth diapering. If you buy 60 new all-in-one diapers, your diaper stash could run $1500. When you add in washing for 4 years (2 kids), that puts your total cost at around $2100. However, if you were to use good quality disposables for 2 kids, you could expect to spend $5000-6000. Plus, you can't resell disposables to recoup part of your cost!

HypoallergenicLike most babies, my oldest son has very sensitive skin. Unfortunately, most diapers contain perfumes that irritate! When we first had our son, we used the free disposables they gave us at the hospital. The perfume on the diapers caused an outbreak of eczema which quickly got infected. We were still building a one-size stash at the time, so we had to switch to expensive, hypoallergenic diapers until he grew into the one-size diapers. While the brands Seventh Generation, Babyganics and Honest didn't hurI havet his delicate skin, they sure hurt our wallets!For baby #2, we are not going to even try the disposables. Instead, we are opting to bring cloth with us to the hospital. Our younger son's reaction to disposables is something we don't have to worry about.It is possible with cloth diapers to still have allergies. We use free & clear detergent on everything (diapers, towels, clothes, etc) to prevent eczema from perfumes. While our family has never had an issue with specific fabrics, it is possible to have allergies.

ComfortI have never, ever heard a woman talk about how much she likes maxi pads. I'm pretty sure no such woman exists. One of the first things that made me want to use cloth diapers was hating maxi pads. If I hate wearing plastic pads for a week, how much would it suck to wear them for 2-3 years??Using cloth prevents rashes by being breathable. Some of the diapers we have allow my son to go around without a waterproof cover on. Around the house, he has just natural fabrics on his tush. This breathing time does a very good job of preventing the rashes that are so common when a baby is in a plastic diaper.

No Blow-outsAll diapers leak sometimes. However, the nature of a leak is different with cloth vs disposables. With cloth diapers, you might have urine wicking. This might be from putting it on wrong, not having enough absorbency, the fabric repelling liquid or just not the right diaper style for that particular baby. We have never had a disposable wick urine.However, disposables have their own leaks: the dreaded blow-out. If you use disposables, you are all but guaranteed to have poo explode out the back of the diaper all the way up to your little one's shoulders. It doesn't even have to be runny: maybe your baby was just sitting wrong! A combination of slippery plastic and weak elastic make disposables leak magnets. And once that poo is up their back, good luck getting them cleaned up without getting both you and your baby covered.When it comes to convenience, blow-out prevention is the thing that will keep us using cloth diapers even if all the other factors were alleviated. It makes sense that cloth prevents explosions. Cloth is grippy, not slippery like plastic. The elastic on cloth diapers is much stronger than on disposables. Depending on the cloth diapers used, there might be 2-3 layers of elastic that would have to be overcome for that poo to get out. We have never had a cloth diaper leak poo.Blow-outs ruin clothes as well as moods. It's much better to let carrot or prune poo stain a cloth diaper that can be bleached or sunned than to let it stain an adorable outfit that is pretty much ruined!

VersatilityWith disposables, you have 2 options on absorbency: regular and overnight. That's it. With cloth diapers, there are a range of options for different situations. We have diapers that are more leak resistant and super absorbent for night, diapers that are trim for play time, boosters for car rides and diapers that are breathable for at home during the day. Some of the diapers are easier to put on than others, giving us options for caregivers who have no experience using cloth. Some of the diapers dry quickly for humid weather. Some of the diapers have a stay dry lining to wick moisture, some let the baby feel moisture to speed potty training. Having options is great because we can meet every situation.

Baby Sleeps Through the NightThe first night we used cloth diapers, our son slept for 8 hours straight. I thought this was just some weird fluke. He'd been sleeping for 5 hours on average, and other people said this was "sleeping through the night". Then it happened again: night after night he was able to sleep for 8 hours as long as he was wearing cloth.We were able to figure out that this was because of the extra absorbency. During periods of heavy wetting, we would go back to shorter sleep periods until we found out we had to add a booster. We have played with the absorbency levels of different styles and materials. Finally, we found a combination that allows the little one to sleep for 11-12 hours straight. Whenever we have used disposables for travel, we go back down to 5-6 hour stretches, if it's an overnight diaper. With a regular disposable diaper, we can expect our son to wake up every 2-3 hours needing a change. Even if we didn't use cloth full-time, we would at least want a few heavy wetter options for overnight!

Overall, we've been very happy with our experience cloth diapering. Anyone should feel as though they can cloth diaper if they want to. And it's OK to cloth diaper part-time. Disposables are definitely easier for traveling! There is no right or wrong decision, only the best decision for your individual family.

When you're a new parent, you read a TON of stuff. Books, forums, blogs, medical sites, etc. We decided that we would like to contribute what we've learned, our attitudes on parenting, and report on how our experiments are working out.Really, parenting is a giant experiment. You have no idea what you're doing, no matter how much you've read. It's important to know that we are all just muddling through. Even if you have 6 kids, every day brings new challenges. Every child, family and situation are different, requiring creativity in dealing with the problems we all face. The way we have found might not be the best way, and might not work for you at all, but hopefully it makes you think about your options and helps you come up with ideas.Our family is just starting out. We have an (almost) one year old and baby #2 is on the way already! In a little over 3 months, we will have 2 little boys. Learning to be parents, and then preparing for another baby has been challenging. We've met this challenge by cooperating, communicating and forgiving.

Our philosophy on parenting and life is pretty simple. We try to value all people as people with as much equity as possible. It can be difficult in the Monkeysphere to remember that every interaction you have is with another person, who has thoughts and feelings and a life just like you.When you believe that every person has value and makes their unique contributions to society, it can help you navigate right and wrong in our complex society. If you're saying that a person is worth less than you because of a specific attribute, then you need to do some soul searching.We believe that by instilling this basic lesson into our children, we are giving them the best chance we can at happiness. We want to protect our kids from having hate in their hearts as well as from external hate.

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